Paul Ryan should like new 'Atlas Shrugged'

Paul Ryan, whose budget passed the House of Representatives on April 15, is a huge fan of Ayn Rand and “Atlas Shrugged.” I have heard that he requires anyone who works for him read the book. I wonder if he gives them a pop quiz? Well now, they can see the movie instead, since it opened recently in select cities.

In 1962, I plowed through “Atlas Shrugged.” It certainly wasn’t as exciting as reading ”The Fountainhead” five years earlier. In that book, Howard Roark (based on Frank Lloyd Wright) designed incredible buildings and then burned them down, and gave emerald necklaces to women he then practically raped. It was good reading for a teenager. “Atlas Shrugged” was a different matter. I read it to be able to converse with young Republicans, who carried it around like a Bible. It was long, hard going, but also the perfect sleeping pill after all-nighters. Rand was born in St. Petersburg in 1905. As a child, she witnessed the Kerensky and the Bolshevik Revolutions before her family fled to the Crimea, where she studied American history and became enamored with the United States. In 1925, she left to visit relatives in New York City and never returned.“Atlas Shrugged,” published in 1957, is 1,168 pages long, and her characters speak in very long, rambling philosophical jargon called objectivism. It containts page upon page of dense wordiness, some of which makes little sense. Her dystopian cast of characters refuse to be “exploited” by society, and so they disappear, along with their leader John Galt. They advocate reason, individualism, unfettered market economy, and no government coercion, and when they don’t get to do exactly what they want, they drop out and run away. This doesn’t seem very heroic to me. Heroes stay in the game in my book.

Although Rand’s masterpiece (in her followers’ minds) was originally panned, it now ranks No. 17 on the top-selling list at Amazon. Oh, and I forgot to add, she was an atheist who happily collected the Social Security she so strongly railed against – so a strange role model for Christian conservatives. She was also a strong supporter of abortion and once in an interview said that love is immoral. I wonder if Paul Ryan knows this, or cares. He doesn’t seem to care about his neighbor either, unless they’re rich.

My guess is that the film will have lots of sex, action clips, and propaganda, just right for a teenage audience. And anyone else who is looking for easy answers to hard problems. My hope is that it keeps many Republicans too busy to wreak more havoc upon our state and country, such as Ryan’s plan to give coupons to seniors and send them out on the street to buy insurance.

Happy viewing, but don’t forget that both this movie and the hype about the Ryan budget are pure fantasy.